Patterns and Scraped Knees

Just recently - really within this last week - Ian has started showing an interest in pattern movement. He'll set up a little obstacle course or trail for himself and then walk/climb that same course over and over. Even though it shouldn't, it totally amazes me that he is old enough to have the cognitive ability to set and repeat such challenges for himself. If I think about it, I guess he has been doing pattern movement for a while - walking back and forth between Mommy and Daddy, tickling Mommy and Daddy over and over again, and playing chase. What I really find amazing is his recent jump in complexity level of these activities.

One of his recent favorite climbing challenges is crawling underneath his jumperoo. Two days ago, he set up the first of his first more complex courses (that I had really observed anyways) using his jumperoo. He started off standing up in his room (where he had been playing with Daddy), got down and crawled under my legs (I was standing in the doorway talking to Daddy), stood up to walk to his jumperoo in the middle of the living room, got down to crawl underneath, stood up to walk to our room, turned around and repeated the same sequence back to his room.

On his hands and knees crawling back underneath the jumperoo (going from our room towards his).

He then got up, walked back to his room, said hi to Daddy, turned around and did the whole thing all over AGAIN!

Crawling through Mommy's legs towards the living room.

Back underneath the jumperoo. (See the little feet scampering away? Too fast for the camera!)

And on and on it went for about four or five complete roundtrips. Needless to say, we were pretty impressed to see his attention span last that long on a reptitious journey!

Yesterday, we let Ian walk outside in between rain storms. He had a blast and, to our surprise, he set up another course for himself! He walked from our front door to the main sidewalk, took a right towards the parking lot (taking a small detour on the grass at the same place every time), turned around, came back and took the second left to the neighbor's front door, circled around back to our front door and started all over again. He did this a couple of times before we thought to get the video camera. I think we only caught the loop once or twice before he changed it up. But still, it was very interesting for us to see this part of his reasoning and planning skills! He even listened the first time Daddy told him to turn around at the parking lot and go the other way (sorry - missed it on video!). After that one time, he turned himself around every time before he got to the edge of the sidewalk where the parking lot started. Here's the video of all that walking! (Disclaimer - video is much shakier than normal and is 4:31...I'm trying to catch up on all these blogs and didn't take the time to edit down. Plus this way shows all his repeated loops.)

During all that walking, Ian fell and got his first scraped knee! He has bumped his knees before, but this was the first time the scrape had a little bit of blood.

Congratulations, Ian! You are a bonafide little boy now! You've passed the initiation test with flying colors!